DR1000 Public BETA of the DR1000S 2.0 software available

[gaphic2]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Different font maybe? That could give the impression that contrast has changed.

Well, I tested it with the same file ...

It would be good if Gertjan could chime in on this one. Does the Mobile Reader SDK give any info on how it aliases?

[SplogSplog]

Originally Posted by Gertjan

For reference, can you give an indication of the number of files and folders on the cards and the time spend indexing?

I have about 700 files. Almost all are PDFs. Many of them are quite small (less than 100 pages). About 50 of them are larger (between 300 and 1000 pages).

Indexing takes approximately 30 minutes.

My second concern is the slowness of page turning when I have a document in landscape mode with an increased fontsize (which I have to do due to the reduced zooming capabilities in 2.0). Page turns are taking between 5 and 10 minutes., which makes it clearly unusable.

[Gertjan]

Originally Posted by SplogSplog

I have about 700 files. Almost all are PDFs. [...] Indexing takes approximately 30 minutes.

That sounds about normal when you have thumbnail generation turned on (which it is by default). It should do that only once though.

My second concern is the slowness of page turning when I have a document in landscape mode with an increased fontsize (which I have to do due to the reduced zooming capabilities in 2.0). Page turns are taking between 5 and 10 minutes., which makes it clearly unusable.

10 minutes per page turn? Wow. There must be something in these documents which makes the Adobe renderer choke. Do you know how these files open with Adobe Digital Editions? Or on another ereader? When you've created the PDF's youself, you could try to generate them with different settings.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by gaphic2

Well, I tested it with the same file ...

Yes, but the PDF viewer is different with the new firmware. Does your file have imbedded fonts, or does it rely on the default viewer font? If the new Adobe app has a different default font than the poppler app did, that might explain it.

[gaphic2]

Yes, the font is embedded. Because I use the font a lot I noticed the difference.

[SplogSplog]

Originally Posted by Gertjan

That sounds about normal when you have thumbnail generation turned on (which it is by default). It should do that only once though.


10 minutes per page turn? Wow. There must be something in these documents which makes the Adobe renderer choke. Do you know how these files open with Adobe Digital Editions? Or on another ereader? When you've created the PDF's youself, you could try to generate them with different settings.

Unfortunately, I don't have another ereader to try. Using Adobe Acrobat on my laptop the page turns are instant. They are very quick (a matter of a second or two) on the iRex too - until I change the font size, which affect the page flow (screwing up the two-column format) and caused page turns to take at least five minutes each.

The problem I have is that for two-column pages "fit to screen" makes the text too small. What I would ideally be able to do is flip to landscape mode (which I can do) and then say "fit to width" (which I cannot do). So, I have to mess with the poor zoom capabilities in the new software or change font size - these screw up page flow and (in the latter case) slow the page turns to an unacceptable level.

Note that I need two-column documents because these are bi-lingual texts, with English in the left hand column and Czech translation in the right hand column. Reflowing the columns so that one is below the other isn't a good work-around.

EDIT: Given that the beta of 2.0 is a step back for me (primarily due to the poor zooming) is there a way for me to reverse my machine back to the previous version of the OS that I was using (v1.7)?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by gaphic2

Yes, the font is embedded. Because I use the font a lot I noticed the difference.

Hmm. Maybe the waveforms were tweaked or the refreshes are being done a little differently, as another poster mentioned. Not sure how much that would really effect the contrast though. Do you notice any difference in the amount of ghosting too?

Are any others noticing a change in contrast with the new firmware?

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by SplogSplog

EDIT: Given that the beta of 2.0 is a step back for me (primarily due to the poor zooming) is there a way for me to reverse my machine back to the previous version of the OS that I was using (v1.7)?

I'm not positive, but I think it's just like any other firmware install. You just download the older 1.7 release and put that on the SD card. It should "upgrade" without caring whether it's going forward or backward... unless there is something special about the 2.0 release that doesn't let you go backwards?

[Mackx]

Originally Posted by SplogSplog

EDIT: Given that the beta of 2.0 is a step back for me (primarily due to the poor zooming) is there a way for me to reverse my machine back to the previous version of the OS that I was using (v1.7)?

I also downgraded to R1.7.1, I first loaded the R1.7.1 firmware on the SD card, restarted the device to install the firmware, formatted my SD card and put back the backup I made before changing to R2.0Beta. This works OK for me.
The content of the metadata.db files changed, so I guess that using the SD-card with R2.0 metadata.db-files is no option for R1.7.1.

[gaphic2]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Hmm. Maybe the waveforms were tweaked or the refreshes are being done a little differently, as another poster mentioned. Not sure how much that would really effect the contrast though. Do you notice any difference in the amount of ghosting too?

Are any others noticing a change in contrast with the new firmware?

I've attached two close-ups of the screen in landscape orientation, full page, fit to page, displaying a page from a pdf with the font embedded.

Lighting, shutter speed, aperture, focal length etc. are the same for the two pics.

[badbob001]

Originally Posted by gaphic2

I've attached two close-ups of the screen in landscape orientation, full page, fit to page page, displaying a page from a pdf with the font embedded.

Looks to be the same font but with one rendered more boldly, as if anti-aliasing was turned up. To me, the more bold rendering looks to have better contrast and sharpness. On my PC Adobe Reader, there are Rendering options for smoothing text and other elements. Perhaps IREX forgot to enable them.

IREX should expose those options as well as allow for user-supplied fonts (it would be interesting to install the Nook fonts for comparison).

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by badbob001

Looks to be the same font but with one rendered more boldly

That's what I thought as well. It looks like one has bold turned on and the other doesn't.

[Gertjan]

Originally Posted by badbob001

Looks to be the same font but with one rendered more boldly, as if anti-aliasing was turned up.

Right on. Both versions have the same font but in the Poppler based renderer, we used to enhance anti-aliasing a bit. The current 2.0 beta doesn't do that yet but we plan to implement a similar solution in the Adobe based solution.

[gaphic2]

Thanks for acknowledging the issue, Gertjan. Do you know if this fix is planned for 2.0 or a later firmware ?

Can you tell us a bit more about the maximum zoom level? Is the maximum level determined by the Adobe renderer?

is two column epub rendering included in the SDK? ADE desktop is able to do this.

[Matthijs]

Originally Posted by gaphic2

Can you tell us a bit more about the maximum zoom level? Is the maximum level determined by the Adobe renderer?

No, this is a memory limitation. We might need to look at the values again, because the Adobe renderer is less memory-hungry than Poppler.

Originally Posted by gaphic2

is two column epub rendering included in the SDK? ADE desktop is able to do this.

We have explicitly disabled column rendering except for landscape with small font size. Unfortunately it is hardcoded in the Adobe RMSDK, so it cannot be changed runtime through a setting...